No stockpiles of WMD…

Fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but left signs that he had idle programs he someday hoped to revive, the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq concludes in a draft report due out soon.

Yup, this is a black eye, but not just for Bush. Leaders and intelligence organizations all over the world thought he had them (especially since he’d used them). So as much as the lefties would like to lay the blame squarely on Bush for this, there’s plenty of folks to spread the blame over, including John Kerry. But that’s not stopping them from getting ready to blame just Dubya.

If the report is released publicly before the Nov. 2 elections, Democrats are likely to seize on the document as another opportunity to criticize the Bush administration’s leading argument for war in Iraq and the deteriorating security situation there.

So was the war a mistake?

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has criticized the president’s handling of the war, but also has said he still would have voted to authorize the invasion even if he had known no weapons of mass destruction would be found there.

One other thing to note: If Saddam was ready to kick the weapons programs back in once the inspectors left (and, on cue, the left would proclaim that inspections had “worked” and that Hussein was not a threat), then the threat would inevitably increase to a point where we would have needed to take him out anyway. And in the meantime, money and lives would be spent ensuring that Hussein didn’t start killing Kurds, while on the ground torture and mass graves would continue to be the order of the day. And that is what the left would have considered a “victory”.